Towards Sustainable Public Procurement in China

Policy and Regulatory Framework, Current Developments and The Case For A Consolidated Green Public Procurement Code

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the effectiveness of China’s current green procurement system by reviewing the current Chinese laws governing public procurement, energy, environment, resources and government assert management, and the operating green government procurement projects, and in a number of cases, through site interviews. It is augured that there are great potentials for the development of sustainable public procurement policy in China given the huge size of the Chinese government procurement market, and the unprecedented political and legal environment for such developments. However, the effectiveness of the current systems is limited. To effectively implement the current green procurement policy and better exploit the potential of sustainable procurement, it is submitted that green procurement policies are implemented through “procedural extension” and “coverage expansion” of the current green procurement systems and these aspects are consolidated into a sustainable public procurement code. The proposed Code would help embrace the concept and framework of sustainable procurement, and confirm, clarify, coordinate and improve the current green procurement systems as well as bring awareness to the government procurement professionals of the many environmental requirements in other area of rules and standards other than public procurement, and thus contributes to the sustainable development goals in general.